Alien Fear Factor

Recently Stephen Hawking has been in the news for saying that we should look for aliens and listen in on them, but avoid contact if we want to avoid extinction. His statement is part of an ongoing discussion over the advisability of METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence), also known as Active SETI, which refers to the act of using high power communications equipment on Earth to transmit various messages to unknown extraterrestrial intelligences. This duscussion has been going on in the scientific community since it was first brought up during a February 1e, 2015 meeting if the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The concern is that the evolutionary “age distribution of Earth-like planets in the universe tells us that the average Earth-like planet is about 2 billion years older” than our planet, meaning that extraterrestrial civilizations could be far advanced of us. Since we dont know their intentions…